EIB WEB PAGE DISGRONIFIER

Aviation and Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr.

RUSH: I got so many nice e-mails from people throughout the aviation industry thanking me for informing people as to all of the tentacles that spread out from a corporate jet, even from its manufacturer to service, completion, and so forth. I want to thank all of you for those nice e-mails. It's a subject close to my heart. I've been fascinated with aviation all my life. My father was a lawyer, but if he really would have fulfilled his dream, he would have run a major airport somewhere.

My father flew P-51s in the China-Burma theater of World War II. He also was an instructor on B-25s. I've seen a picture of him outside one, I think it was in Alabama in World War II, I'm not totally sure about that. He had a little Cessna 182 for a while when we were growing up, and my mother took flight school lessons, and she went to her ground school and did her solo and so forth, and got her instrument rating with the hood. I saw all this as I was growing up and I've been fascinated with aviation all my life. My dad got every flight magazine there was, Aviation, Flight, whatever, and he was reading them, and, you know, if I may get personal here for a brief moment before we go to the break, my father and mother would not believe my life. One of the saddest things, one of the most regretful things I have is that my father died before we acquired EIB One. He would have not believed it. I would not have been able to get him out of the cockpit jump seat. He would have tried to go get his jet rating. He wouldn't have been interested in sitting back in the passenger cabin with the flight attendant servicing adult beverages and food.

He would want to be up there in the cockpit flying. He'd want to do acrobatics in it, which of course you can't do. (laughing) He'd want to do aerobatics; he'd want to do the stalls; he'd want to try the single engine procedure; he'd want to be involved in all of this. That's one of my major regrets; that he never even knew. It's not that he was sick and wasn't able to do it, he never even knew that we had acquired an EIB One. But, no, I've had a lifelong fascination (interruption) -- what? No, you can't, by regulation, you can't do a barrel roll. No, not in a corporate jet. That's not that kind of an airplane. These things, most of them will not even fly upside down. The fuel pumps, well, that's not true, safety regulations today, but they're not designed for it. Those are emergency procedures that work for a while, but they're not designed for that kind of torque and stress that you would put on it.